Cabbies still remember 1989 slayings

TRENTON — For Trenton’s veteran corps of taxi drivers, the slaying in Burlington City of cabbie Larry Hamilton is déjà vu all over again.

Many drivers working Trenton today were also on the job in November of 1989 when two city cabbies, Frank Bodnar and Willie Rodgers, were shot dead and robbed within hours only streets apart in the West Ward.

And what the cabbies are saying today about the slaying of Hamilton are the same kinds of comments made and issues raised 23 years ago when 20-year-old twins Ron and John Allen started targeting cabs for drug money.

After his killing, Bodnar’s colleagues said he talked about installing bullet-proof glass between the front and back seats of his cab. But fellow driver Jose Guidin told The Trentonian Bodnar never did it.

“He always joked around and said, ‘If they’re going to get you, they’re going to get you no matter what,’” Guidin related as he stood talking with other terrified cabbies outside the city train station in 1989.

All these years later, many city cabs have no barrier between driver and riders, as is mandatory for taxis in Philadelphia and New York.

And then as now, some cabbie refused to travel into the West Ward unless they know the patron or even refused to five rides to anyone who is suspicious looking — often young black males like the Allen brothers, who were 20 at the time and now are in prison until at least age 80.